Wikiscanner and Wikirage
By now, most everyone in the Wiksphere has heard of Wikiscanner, the tool that Virgil Griffith put online to help folks decipher who was doing what “anonymous IP” edits in Wikipedia. I call it the equivalent of the “DC Madam” list that rocked Washington DC this year.
You could make the argument Wikiscanner’s impact is greater in scope and importance, given the number of organizations fingered in the log analysis and the types of edits that were made.
One problem with taking all the Wikiscanner info at face value is that while you see the edit made by the IP, you may not immediately know whether it “stuck” or was reverted seconds or minutes later. That would be a good secondary level of research — did those edits stick?
Another tool worth noting is Wikirage, which tries to identify the most edited articles in a particular time span. The description:
This site lists the pages in Wikipedia which are receiving the most edits per unique editor over various periods of time. Popular people in the news, the latest fads, and the hottest video games can be quickly identified by monitor this social phenomenon.
It’s a pretty interesting adjunct to Wikicharts, which shows what pages are being viewed. If you look at what’s hot top 20 now in editing, and reading for the last week, there is not much overlap. But I wonder if you readers out there see any interesting trends?
Top 20 Most Edited
- BioShock
- Moon
- 2007 Greek forest fires
- Deaths in 2007
- Larry Craig
- Antonio Puerta
- Alberto Gonzales
- Abdullah Gül
- Oscar Gutierrez
- Owen Wilson
- SummerSlam (2007)
- UEFA Champions League 2007-08
- Archaeopteryx
- Houston, Texas
- 2007 World Championships in Athletics
- Beyoncé Knowles
- Nick Hogan
- Making the Band
- William Goebel
Top 20 Most Read
- United States
- List of big-bust models and performers
- JonBenét Ramsey
- List of sex positions
- Hurricane Katrina
- Pluto
- List of female porn stars
- Irukandji jellyfish
- Pornography
- Wii
- World Wrestling Entertainment roster
- Jeff Hardy
- Pokémon
- September 11, 2001 attacks
- Celebrity sex tape
- Neighbours
- Warren Jeffs
- C programming language
- Sasuke Uchiha
- Volkswagen Type 2
(Some articles excised, like [[Wikipedia]], [[Main Page]] and the like)
September 1st, 2007 04:33
What I find interesting is that there seems to be a first level of approach to Wikipedia (the reading one) that is generated by let’s say (at least) three general levels of interest: (a) cultural entertainment, probably very connected to a digital natives age range (6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 19 and 20), (b) sex “entertainment”, from a very masculine point of view (2, 4, 7, 9, and 15) and (c) political or practical knowledge, related to news or world knowledge (1, 3, 5, 8, 14, 17, 18).
Looking now at the Top 20 Most Edited list, this last type of content (more related maybe to what one finds in offline encyclopedias) is the one that seems to get more edits (deeper level of participation). One may consider then the other two types of content as a kind of attention attractors (maybe Google-driven), that in some cases lead to more people involved or “getting serious” within the wiki.
Although from the complete list at Wikirage there seems to be a general “fight” between (let’s say) “light” and “serious” knowledge, like some Wikigroaning comparisons showed some time ago. Or who knows if it all simply suggest a kind of cultural paradigm shift between “light and serious” knowledge
September 9th, 2007 11:06
Great message.
I guess you’ll check out my diary..
See ya
September 11th, 2007 04:06
Thanks your post is delightful.
I like your site..
thank you again